In September, around the six-month mark of the pandemic shutdowns, trumpeter James Andrews ended a conversation with Gambit on an optimistic note.
Earlier this year, Andrews released a book with Monique Bornstein, âBorn in The Treme,â and he was touring Europe when the shutdowns began. He scrapped the tour and got one of the last flights back from France. After that, he said, it was just a âdomino effectâ of lost work: Music venues closed, regular gigs were canceled and then the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival were first postponed and eventually called off.
Andrews was left in a âholding pattern.â But as the months ticked by, he started to work on new material and began performing small porch concerts or dropping into neighborhoods for small, physically distanced concerts.